Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 7 (1914): Episode No. 1 on the Screen

Episode No. 1 of The Million Dollar Mystery was enthusiastically reviewed, and leading trade publications devoted much space to it. The commentary in The New York Dramatic Mirror is typical:

We had heard much of The Million Dollar Mystery and naturally awaited with interest our first glimpse of "the nine-mile serial." Taking the initial installment as a criterion, we are able to expect nine miles of thrills, nine miles of conspiracies, captures and escapes; in a phrase, nine miles of unvarnished, old-fashioned melodrama. If the prescription may seem unduly large, it is but necessary to remember that the individual doses are exceedingly moderate and well calculated to suit the taste of photoplay fans.

The producer has aimed at two targets: the injection of mystery and the maintenance of the suspense created by that mystery to the introduction of thrill piling upon thrill. Concerning this mystifying the spectator who views the first installment there is little doubt, for it is some time after seeing the picture before one ceases to wonder "what became of the million dollars?"

It is to be suspected that with so strong a demand upon the producer's inventive powers that many of the exciting incidents are old-time friends, some are new; but it is probable that all will be strangers to the present generation of photoplay spectators. Likewise, since all photoplays must be judged by the standards of their type, one should not complain if the characters seem at times to seek danger without a sufficient motive, and if occasionally the development seems jerky.

In a carefully prepared introductory part we meet President Hite, of the Thanhouser Film Company, and the players and other members of his staff responsible for the serial. The story itself opens with Stanley Hargreave leaving his infant daughter at a girls' boarding school, where she is to remain, without ever seeing her father, until she is 18 years old. We jump to the time when the daughter is 18 years old. Hargreave has been discovered by the Black Hundred, a secret society to which he belonged in his youth, only to prove a traitor.

When Hargreave finds that he has been discovered he plans flight but decides to have his daughter with him, and she is sent for. Before she arrives, however, the Black Hundred, learning that he has gathered together a million dollars in preparation for the flight, tightens its noose. While his enemies are beating upon the doors and windows in an effort to break into the house and capture him, Hargreave makes a thrilling escape from the roof with the aid of aviator A. Leo Stevens. It is during these exciting scenes, and they are far more so than a brief description can show, that the million dollars disappears. The producer has given us only a close-up view of the safe, with the unknown hands turning the combination and securing the money. This is shown in the midst of a series of well-handled flash-backs that carry us from the men frantically beating upon the doors to the frightened butler peering through the windows and to the escape from the roof. One of the Black Hundred's bullets strikes the balloon, and we see it sinking, then a close-up, "far out at sea," of the collapsed balloon drifting about on the waves, ends the first installment.